If I Lose Her

by Greg Joseph Daily

  “Greg, I finally got the commissioner on line two,” some woman with black rimmed glasses called out.

  We sat down at Dan’s desk, cluttered with hand-written notes and ink-jet prints of photos with comments scribbled in the margins.

  He reached past me and turned down a radio from which I could hear a police officer talking to a dispatcher.

  “So you know Mike?”

  “Yeah. I worked for him for a little over six months,” I said handing him my portfolio.

  “He does some good work for us.”

  “I learned a lot from him.”

  He flipped through the plastic pages of my photographs, stopping to look at each one carefully.

  “Tell me about this shot,” he said turning the book to me and pointing to an image of a cow caught in barbed wire with a gun-wielding rancher in the background; the sky was an unnatural, rust-red.

  “The Mile High Guide sent me to take some photos of the fires last June Northwest of Fort Collins. The police wouldn’t let me get close enough to actually see any fire, so I went around and started talking to some of the people who lived around there, and I just happened to find this rancher. The fire had spooked his livestock the night before, and he found this one caught in a fence the next morning. He had to put it down.”

  “It’s a good shot.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I had two people working the Fort Collins fires that week and none of them got this shot.”

  He flipped through the rest of the pages. Then he glanced over my resume.

  “When can you start?”

  “I can start right away,” I said trying to maintain my rush of excitement.

  “Good. I have one of my shooters going on vacation Friday. How does Wednesday sound?”

  “That sounds wonderful.”

  “I’ll need a photo ID, social security card and a letter from your school confirming that you’re approved for an internship.”

  “An internship?”

  He looked at me for a moment. “Yeah, it’s a paid internship. Mike did tell you that right?”

  “I don’t recall him mentioning it.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “No, not at all. What does the internship pay?”

  “Ten an hour, three-days-a-week and two Saturdays a month. Does that work?”

  That is more than Mike was paying me.

  “That’s great.”

  “Great. I’ll see you Wednesday. Oh, and one more thing. You’ll need credentials, and you should probably get those now since Jane’s the only one who can make them and she’ll be going on maternity leave any day. She’s just at the end of the hall.”

  I walked down to Jane’s office and knocked on the door.

  “Can I help?”

  “Yeah, I guess I’m the new photojournalism intern. Dan said I should stop by to get some credentials.”

  “Congratulations,” she said smiling and handing me some forms to fill out.

  I filled them out, she took my photo and then I sat. Fifteen minutes later she handed me a laminated card with my photo on red paper that read: “Alex Douglas, Photo Journalist, Daily Camera, 2001.”

  I ran my hand over the warm plastic. Photo. Journalist…Finally.

  When I got in my car, I pounded my steering wheel and screamed in excitement as I got on the highway and drove home.

  Photo ID. Social Security Card. School confirmation. How am I going to get school confirmation?

  I hadn’t really done any school shopping like Jo had over the past year, and I sure as hell didn’t have the time to do any now, so I went to the only school that came to mind, which was only blocks from my apartment. I drove past my street and parked in the guest parking at Auraria Campus. Then I found the admissions office under the Metropolitan State College of Denver sign, went in and found my place in a line of students that ran down the hall and around a corner.

  This is going to take forever.

  I took a class catalogue from a stand and flipped through it while I waited. It didn’t actually take all that long before it was my turn at the desk.

  “Can I help you?” A real roly-poly of a lady asked.

  “Yeah, I just need to register for an internship.”

  “Uh, you can’t just register for an internship. You can register for classes and select one internship per semester as part of your workload.”

  “I’d like to do that then.”

  She handed me a clipboard.

  “Fill these out and bring them back with your transcripts.”

  Transcripts?

  “I don’t have my transcripts with me.”

  “We can’t register you until you fill out the forms, submit your transcripts and pay the fee.”

  “What’s the fee?”

  “A non-refundable $75.”

  $75? SHIT!

  “Can I bring these forms back when I have my transcripts?”

  “Yep.” Then she looked past me to the line out her office door. “Next.”

  Classes started next week. If I could get my high school transcripts I could register, but where was I going to come up with the $75? I walked out to the car and turned the key. The fuel gauge was buried deep in the red. I had a couple of small things at my apartment I could hawk, like my camera gear, but I needed my camera for the newspaper. I couldn’t pawn my car either, now that I was going to be driving back and forth to Boulder three to four times a week.

  I watched students walk back and forth in front of my car for a good fifteen minutes while I tried to find a solution.

  Borrowing money from Jo just wasn’t an option, which meant that there was really only one option left.

  I turned the car on and became fixated on the fuel gauge for the entire trip to my mother’s house; the whole time praying that somehow my baby wouldn’t run out of fuel and leave me stranded on the side of the highway.

  To my utter consternation I made it.

  A sporty-red Mitsubishi Eclipse and a duel-wheeled Ford pickup truck sat in the driveway.

  I looked at the clock on my phone. It was nearly 6:30.

  I walked up to the door and knocked. Knocking felt weird.

  It took a minute, then my mother answered.

  “Alex!” She said stepping forward and hugging me.

  “Hey, lady.”

  “How are you? Are you okay? Is everything alright? Please, come in.”

  She stepped back and I entered the hall.

  I used to know this place, but now it feels so different.

  I looked at the muddy pair of work boots sitting next to my mother’s flats on the entry mat.

  It smells different. You smell different.

  “I’m okay, everything’s fine. I got some news today and to be honest, you were the first person I wanted to talk to about it.”

  She smiled and put her hand over her mouth like she was about to cry.

  She hugged me again.

  “I’ve missed you,” she whispered.

  “I missed you too lady.”

  The house smells like food. They must have just finished dinner.

  “I’m not interrupting anything am I?”

  “NO, no. We were just washing up. Are you hungry? There’s leftovers.”

  Then Peter walked around the corner from the kitchen with a dishtowel in his hands.

  “Hey kid,” he said smiling and walking over to shake my hand.

  I shook his hand and determined that there was nothing left to be said or done about him and my mom, so I just needed to make the best of it.

  “How you doin’? You hungry? We can throw a plate together for ya.”

  “No, that’s okay. I just got some news and wanted to stop by and share it.”

  “Well, come on in,” Peter said pointing me to the living room.

  I sat down on the couch and looked around.

  Some of the house was still so very familiar to me, but some of it was so different. There was a deer head mounted on the wall above the television
, and a rifle resting in its antlers. A pair of cowboy boots leaned against the television stand and a cowboy hat sat like a bowl waiting for candy on the coffee table. Then I noticed that the photo I had grown up looking at of my dad on the wall was gone. A photo of Peter and my mother hung in its place.

  “So, what’s yer big news?” Peter asked sitting down next to my mother.

  I just looked at him for a minute, wanting to leave, wanting to take the photo off the wall and throw it out in the street with his boots and his hats and him right along with it, but I imagined my mother standing up for him like she was already doing. So I took a deep breath and did what I came to do.

  “I got a job today at a newspaper in Boulder called the Daily Camera.”

  “Oh Alex, congratulations!”

  “That’s not all. I also registered for classes at Metro State.”

  “College? Really? Honey that’s wonderful! When do you start?”

  “I start at the paper Wednesday and classes start sometime next week. I haven’t finished registering yet. That’s part of what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Okay?”

  “You see, Mike Baxter, the photographer who I was working for, had to let me go a few weeks back because he didn’t have enough work through Christmas to keep me on, and things have gotten pretty tight financially. I’ve been okay, but I kind of need some money to help me with registration fees, mostly just to get me through, until I start getting paid at the newspaper.”

  “Absolutely,” she said looking over at Peter.

  He looked back at her but didn’t say anything. He just smiled.

  “I will definitely pay you back, once I get my first paycheck.”

  “How much do you need?” and she stood to get her checkbook out of her purse.

  “Registration and books are probably going to be a couple of hundred, and to be honest, I could probably use a little help with rent this month.”

  “Would a thousand cover it?”

  “That’s too much. I don’t need that much.”

  “Look, I’m going to write you a check for a thousand, and here’s two-hundred in cash, so you can get some groceries.” Then she handed me the check and small stack of twenties.

  I held it for a second and looked up at her and Peter.

  “You have no idea how much this helps.”

  “Honey, don’t mention it. We’re just glad we can help. Do you have to head out right away or can you stay for a little bit? I’d love to hear how things are with Jo.”

  “I can stay for a bit,” I said feeling a lot more comfortable now, knowing that I would be able to put gas in the car to drive home.

  I stayed for another hour talking about Jo and her upcoming exhibit at the Denver Art Museum, how things were going between us and how I had been looking for work. I wasn’t quite ready to discuss how I wanted to ask Jo to marry me in front of Peter, so I didn’t bring that up. Mom told me how things were at the store, where they went on their honeymoon and how Peter had bought her that little red sports car for a wedding present. She seemed happy and that made me a little more comfortable.

  When we were finished, I hugged my mother and assured her that she would be hearing from me more often. Then Peter said he wanted to walk me out to my car.

  “I’m glad your mom and I are able to help you get into school,” he said as I opened my car door and sat down. “And, you’ll always be our kid, but we’d appreciate it if you called before you came over from now on.”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond.

  “We just don’t want anyone sneakin’ round the house. That’s all.”

  Sneakin’ round the house?

  “Take care now.”

  Then he shut my car door, and I drove away.

  The whole way home I kept thinking about what he had said to me.

  Your mom and I? He didn’t do anything. She’s the one who said she wanted to help me. He just sat there looking like I had just shot his hound dog. And our kid? OUR kid? Who does he think he is, my FATHER? That’s MY house. You should be calling me before YOU come over. But that last part was the worst. The idea that I was sneaking around like some thief trying to steal something just rang like a tuning fork between my ears.

  I got back to my apartment tired and hungry. Hungry for a decent meal and hungry for Jo.

  I took the money out of my pocket, laid the check and the cash on the dresser and dropped a twenty into the laptop box. Then I closed the lid and slid the box under my bed.

  Twenty-Six

  It was January and snow was slowly piling on my head and shoulders. It didn’t feel all that cold when I had arrived, but I could see my breath and feel the warmth leeching out of my body slowly over the twenty minutes that I had been sitting there waiting for Jo. I could have called her that morning, but I wanted to surprise her. The new class schedule she had given me a few weeks earlier told me that her first class started in half-an-hour, so I was hoping to catch her before she went in. It was quieter than I was expecting a campus to be on its first day of classes. Maybe because of how early it was.

  The color of the flowers I held was slowly turning to white and I couldn’t feel much heat through the cups of our hot chocolates any more. I could still smell them though.

  Maybe I’ve missed her. Maybe she’s started parking in a different lot and she is already in her class, warming up, flipping though the pages of some thick new textbook. I’m hungry. Maybe we can sneak off and get some breakfast together. We haven’t been to the Trail Way in a while. I’d KILL for some of their biscuits and gravy right now. I can’t believe I’m going to be a journalist. A real journalist, for a real newspaper. I have to stop by school this afternoon and pick up my transcripts. They said they’d be ready after 2. What are transcripts anyway? Are just my grades listed or is it some long commentary about everything I’ve ever done since grade-school?

  I sat hunched over like a fluffed up bird on the edge of a short brick wall with my legs pulled up close to my chest, trying to keep them warm.

  I wonder what kind of stories I’ll get to cover. Does the Camera have foreign correspondents? I wouldn’t think they would have the finances for that. Do I find my own stories or do they assign them to us? I wonder what kind of places my credentials will get me into. Maybe I can get in to photograph the Broncos. THAT would be sweet. I wonder when I’ll get my first paycheck. Three-days-a-week at eight hours is twenty-four, plus two Saturdays a month, cut in half so twenty-eight hours a week on average times ten is two-hundred and eighty a week. That’s a grand a month and change. If I put a hundred away every month, I’d have twelve hundred by the end of the year. Ouch. I don’t want to have to wait that long to ask Jo to marry me. Maybe there is some sort of jewelry credit card I could open to put a ring on.

  The little silver hatchback that Jo’s parents got her last year pulled into the parking lot.

  She looks so good. It’s only been four days since I saw her last, and it seems like my world has completely changed since then. She still doesn’t know about school. It was so last minute.

  I walk up to her.

  “Hey you,” I say as she works to lift her book bag out of the back of her car.

  “Hey! What are you doing here?” She asks and we pull each other close.

  “I wanted to bring you a peace offering on your first day back in class,” I say handing her a cup and her flowers. “Sorry, I think your hot chocolate might have turned into a cold chocolate.”

  “How long have you been waiting here?”

  “About forty-five minutes. I wanted to catch you before you went into class, and I wasn’t sure what time you would get here so I just came and waited.”

  “Aren’t you freezing?”

  “Yeah, pretty much, but getting to see you is worth it.”

  “Ah, baby. Thanks.”

  She blew some of the snow off of the flowers and took a smell, then we started walking past the library to her class.

  “I have maybe fifteen minutes,”
she said taking a drink from the Styrofoam cup.

  “Is it still warm?”

  “No,” she said laughing. I laughed too.

  “Jo, let me just say how much of a jerk I was the other night at the restaurant. I should have talked to you about where things were for me. I just needed to be able to work them out on my own.”

  She cupped her hands and blew heat into them as she listened to me. I took her hands and rubbed them in mine.

  “Alex, I just want to be apart of your life. I’m sorry that things didn’t work out at the studio, but you did a really great job while you were there and I am confident that you will get this job at the newspaper. You are such a good photographer. You just…”

  I put a finger up to her mouth. “I got the job.”

  She started laughing.

  “What? Oh Alex, congratulations!”

  “There’s more.”

  “Okay?”

  “The job is for a paid internship, so I am going down this afternoon and registering for classes at Metro State downtown, and I kind of needed some help with registration fees, so I went and talked to mom.”

  “Oh, Alex, that’s such great news. I knew things would be alright. So when do you start at the paper?”

  “Tomorrow morning, assuming I can get everything sorted out.”

  She grabbed my lapel and pulled me close.

  “So, do you wanna have dinner tonight, at your place? My parents are in Estes Park for a couple of days.”

  I could tell by the way she was biting her lip that she wasn’t talking about dinner.

  “Oh, I think I could use some dinner.”

  Then we kissed each other.

  Jo cooked a creamy, garlic risotto and stayed the night. After she fell asleep, I lay awake playing through all the possible scenarios that tomorrow might present. Would I be sent to photograph kids at some school event or would I get to cover a real story? Would I even get to cover a story on my first day? Will I be working with another shooter? Does Dan ever go out shooting with us? What happens if I screw up? The questions just kept coming.

  A little after midnight I got out of bed and warmed myself up a cup of milk with a little cinnamon. A trick my mom had learned from my grandmother. I wasn’t sure how much it helped me fall asleep, but the smell of the cinnamon milk was always comforting.